Camilla's heavy baggage

Camilla owes the American people the truth: how many dresses did she pack? So far, she and British officials have refused to comment on tabloid reports that she packed 50 dresses for the eight-day trip. Perhaps she's trying to be diplomatic. She may know of the great modern American taboo against "overpacking", which is now defined as anything that can't be lugged onto the plane and crammed into the overhead bin.

But that's why she needs to speak out for the rest of us, the outcasts who still travel with 30-inch suitcases and monster duffle bags (and those are just for weekend trips). We need a celebrity to champion the cause of overpackers – a term, by the way, we find offensive as well as nonsensical, because it is impossible to pack too much. The term we prefer is überpacker.

Überpackers believe, like the Boy Scouts, in being prepared. What if it snows in Death Valley? What if you get lost in Paris without a GPS? What if you take only eight novels to the beach and finish them all? What if your portable printer and your backup printer break? What if 49 changes of clothes just aren't enough?

Überpackers do not think that one wrinkle-free, stain-resistant blazer from the TravelSmith catalog is all you need for a trip to London. We don't understand the righteous joy travellers take in going around the world with two "versatile" pairs of pants. We don't understand their fondness for spending evenings washing underwear in the bathroom sink. We believe there are two kinds of travelers: überpackers and those who end up trying to borrow our stuff.

We refuse to be shamed into packing light. We honour the titans of the past, like the socialite Rita de Acosta Lydig, who early last century regularly checked into the Paris Ritz with 40 Louis Vuitton trunks. Or Queen Elizabeth, who travelled through Africa with luggage weighing six tons.

Granted, those überpackers had staffs to deal with the luggage, but travelling heavy can be done fairly easily today even without servants. How much trouble is it to get a couple of wheeled suitcases from the taxi to the check-in counter? Most airlines don't even charge for checking luggage, yet travellers still insist on squeezing everything into a little bag and schlepping it themselves onboard the plane.

They say they're doing it to be practical – to save time and not risk losing the bag – but there's so little time and risk involved that I think it has more to do with fashion. Travelling heavy was a sign of status when only the rich had a lot of clothes and other possessions to move, just as being fat was a sign of status when food was scarce.

But now that clothes and food are so readily available to the middle class, there's no cachet in walking around with either a bulging stomach or a bulging suitcase. Carrying a tiny bag, like being thin, marks you as an enlightened, disciplined being who is impervious to worldly temptations. You are not a slave to your possessions.

This lean, mean image appeals especially to male fantasies of travel as an escape from domesticity, which is why men take such pride in travelling light. They set out on business trips thinking of themselves as road warriors; they take adventure vacations pretending to be explorers living off the land. When they're setting out to fight battles or conquer the wilderness, it would be unmanly to haul extra shoes or clean shirts. The Right Stuff is no stuff.

These men are prone to the James Bond fallacy that you can be a dashing hero ready to cope with anything while travelling the world carrying nothing but an attaché case and a few miniature gadgets. Bond wastes no time hanging around baggage carousels, yet somehow he's got the right ensemble for every occasion – Brioni suits, dinner jackets (black and white), double-breasted blazers, wet suit, flight suit, cat-burglar suit, ski outfit, beachwear and, in one unfortunate moment, a partly zipped leisure suit.

Maybe Bond was an early adopter of the strategy now favoured by the fashion-conscious: sending your luggage by FedEx to avoid the ignominy of lugging it into the airport. But that still makes him a deep-cover überpacker, and I wish he and Camilla would both do the rest of us a favour by going public. Come out of the closet, überpackers! There's nothing left in there anyway.

© The New York Times